Cassandra Voices

Author: Kevin Higgins

  • Poetry – Kevin Higgins

    After Recent Unfortunate Results

    Next election onwards,
    there’ll be a second vote for those
    who turn up with, under their arm,
    a print copy of one of the larger newspapers
    and answer a few unobtrusive questions
    to prove they’ve consumed it correctly.

    A third for those who also present receipts
    that show they’ve dined sufficiently
    in restaurants with at least four stars,
    and a note from the maitre d
    that they know their way around the cutlery.

    A fourth for the lucky few in possession – to boot –
    of a ticket for one of those pampering spas
    at which one temporarily discards
    worldly things to have one’s darker parts
    irrigated of all subversive thoughts.

    So when all’s said and counted,
    people who shouldn’t matter
    can go back to not mattering.

  • The Continuing Story of Óglaigh na hÉireann

    The Continuing Story of Óglaigh na hÉireann

    All around the snot-nosed parishes of Ireland
    small people of both genders, and neither,
    are flapping open
    copies of The Sunday O’Duffy
    getting worried
    about the continued existence
    of the Citizen Army, Fenian Brotherhood,
    Official IRA.

    We can’t have
    parties who perspire to government
    secretly controlled by cabals
    of men (and ladies) whose faces
    we never see; apart from those
    faces prescribed by prevailing winds
    and the agreed rules
    of the European Union,
    which we need never see
    but rest eternally assured
    are there. Or thereabouts.

    The only weaponry allowed
    those seeking elected office
    are five piece suits to help little
    men appear substantial,
    and no more than six
    plastic chairs on which the faithful can
    every other month gather
    to recite the Our Father,
    or discuss the rising
    price of sewage. Even

    the Social Democrats must come clean
    about the continued non-existence
    of their army council, and what role precisely
    Fintan O’Toole plays in its
    military high command.

    A mature democracy like ours
    needs parties whose manifestos
    political correspondents
    with excellent haircuts (and none) can safely
    spread across their living room floors
    and roll around naked on
    without fear of being interrupted
    by men and women wearing
    illegally held
    balaclavas.

  • Poetry – Kevin Higgins

    Advisory Epistle From Literature Quangocrat
    after Alexander Pope 

    About my person, I at all times carry
    a bowl of re-heated cocktail sausages
    and a completed application form asking
    that I be better funded next year. I only read novels
    which interrogate the relationship
    between gout and Islamist terrorism,
    translated from the obligatory French;
    and poets whose words make me sink
    more comfortably into
    my brown swivel chair.

    It’s taken five hundred thousand Euro
    strategically invested by a range
    of government agencies
    over the past three years to give
    the literature loving public
    me sitting here in this office, knowing
    the name of the third most
    popular poet in Mongolia;
    a country I had to visit
    three times last year,
    at your expense, to ascertain
    the correct pronunciation
    of said verse-maker’s name.

    My most ardent followers,
    a hairy-palmed crew
    of professional online smoochers
    who append themselves to me
    on the off-chance, like maggots
    around an untreated wound,
    each with an avant-garde masterpiece safely
    locked way inside his or her head.

    My own favourite writers? By far
    those who are on nobody’s
    side but their own.